John the Revelator (17 page)

She reached into her bag and fumbled out a box of condoms with a picture of a sailboat on the front, pushed my seat back and climbed on top. I pawed at her blouse and she undid her bra from the front and then hair and braless breasts hung in my face. She fumbled the condom box open, shook one out, tore the wrapping off and pinched the air out of the teat. She pulled me out of my trousers and rolled the rubber on, then tugged her tights and panties down and mounted, guiding me in, moving her weight about.

The smell of us polluted the car. A voice babbled from the back of my brain.

The hookworm has dagger teeth which it uses to gnaw into capillaries and devour the intestine, injecting its host with an anti-clotting agent.

Her backside pistoned.

Or a pinworm. Pinworms are sometimes found in the vulva, the uterus and the fallopian tubes because they get lost on the way back to the anus after depositing their eggs.

She splayed her hands across the dashboard and pranged her lower half onto my pelvic bones.

The South American carnero fish has sharp bones with a series of spines located around the head. It follows urine smells in water and enters swimmers' urethras. It swims up the victim's penis and extends its spines and takes in blood, expanding as it feeds.

Our bodies made slapping noises. The plastic Jesus watched it all, palms up.

The only cure is an expensive form of surgery that involves inserting the Xagua plant and the Buitach apple up the urethra, which kill and then dissolve the carnero fish. For people who cant afford the operation, amputation is the only cure.

I was on a hair-trigger. I remembered the one Fintan told us about Snow White sitting on Pinocchio's face and moaning tell-a-lie-tell-the-truth-tell-a-lie-tell-the-truth, and that made me even more excited somehow. My own Pinocchio nose seemed to grow longer with each stroke and the feeling came upon me and I let it go, thinking,
I'm a real boy now.

Molly Ross sensed the shudders and moved up a gear, panting,
fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck,
ramming her hind parts onto my front parts, but I'd already emptied out. I was going rubbery and limp down there, and it hurt a bit.

She stopped moving, carefully reached down and extracted me and climbed off and flopped into the driver's seat.

‘Sorry,' I mumbled.

‘S'OK.'

She took a packet of wipes from her handbag and dabbed at her undercarriage and pulled her tights back up.

‘First time, huh?'

‘Yeah.'

I felt strange and sort of sick. I wanted to go home, but it was too late to turn back.

‘Never mind,' she said. ‘It gets better.'

She unwound the car window, carefully tugged the rubber off of me and threw it into the ditch where it hung from a briar, withered and deflated. Again with the wipes, and she started the engine and manoeuvred the car around. We bumped down the lane and back onto the main road. She tousled my hair. I gave her a weak smile and zipped up my fly and buckled my belt.

‘Hey,' she said. ‘It's fine.'

The sudden kindness in her voice made my eyes prickle. Silence swallowed everything. I didn't speak again until we'd reached Ballo town. She insisted on running me all the way to the train station, even though it was out of her way.

As I got out, she leaned across the passenger seat and squeezed my arm. All I felt was sad and homesick.

I watched her drive away into the what-was-coming.

 

The train station was deserted. The digital timetable hanging over the platform said there were no more arrivals due until morning. The sky behind the mountains was beginning to redden up; another couple of hours and the light would fail and with it my chances of getting a lift home. The whole day had been for nothing.

I left the station and walked down the creaking woodenworks under the hulking shadow of a rust-coloured trawler moored to the dock by groaning ropes as thick as jungle vines. Dinghies and dories bumped against the boardwalk's supporting struts. Across the sound, cranes and diggers silhouetted the skyline, and great white storage containers like sinister prefabs glowed yellow under sodium lights.

Disgusted with the world, I lit a cigarette.

Across the street, a car growled into life. It executed a rough U-turn and inched along the kerb. The back window rolled down and Gunter Prunty stuck his big head out.

‘Hop in.'

Fintan was in the driver's seat, Davy hunched in the back on the far side. I flicked ash from my cigarette and stared at the tip. The prospect of getting into a car with those three wasn't exactly appealing, but I didn't want to be stranded in Ballo either.

‘All right.'

I tossed the cigarette. Gunter shouldered the door open and got out to let me in. Davy shoved over and stared out the window. The car stank of skunkweed and cowshit. Fintan twisted around in his seat.

‘Sorry ‘bout the squeeze,' he said. ‘We're carrying a load.' He patted one of several fertiliser sacks dumped on the front passenger seat and stacked on the floor.

The car pulled onto the road and accelerated out of Ballo. Fintan turned on the car radio and punched the pre-sets. Pop songs and wafts of classical music. Traffic reports. Ads read by people talking faster than auctioneers. Two taps of a stick on a snare drum and a ceilidh combo piled hell for leather into a jig or a reel. Fintan turned it up so loud the sound was distorted. The noise and smoke made me dizzy. I realised I hadn't eaten all day.

We bombed up the main Kilcody road, diddley-eye music blaring. Fintan drove like a lunatic, taking the bends at reckless speed. Occasionally he removed both hands from the wheel to adjust his ponytail, steering with his knees. Gunter lit a joint and passed it to Davy. The reek was foul. Through the windscreen, the broken white line blurred under the front of the bonnet like a tractor beam, reeling us home. The lights of Kilcody appeared in the distance. I willed them closer.

We reached the end of a long straight stretch of road and came up fast on a hairpin bend. The joint came round to me. I took a couple of drags and passed it over the headrest to Fintan. Eyes locked on the approaching bend, he reached back to take the joint and knocked it from my fingers and it tumbled end over end into his lap, sparks flying. He yelped, and the car swerved all over the road as he clawed between his legs. His elbow jarred the radio's volume switch and the ceilidh music jumped to a deafening level. Headlights flashed. An oncoming car loomed in the windscreen and blazed past us, horn blaring. We skidded around the bend, skimming the far ditch, but somehow managed to stay on the road. Fintan finally located the joint and stuck it in his mouth. He killed the radio and glared over his shoulder.

‘You nearly burnt the balls off me, young fella.'

‘Never mind that,' Davy said. ‘I think that was the squad car.'

‘Pull the other one.'

‘I'm serious.'

Fintan swivelled around, bug eyed.

‘If you're winding me up, I'll throttle you.'

‘I think he's right,' Gunter said. ‘I thought it was the squadder too.'

Fintan checked the rear-view mirror, horror spreading across his face like blood from a cut.

‘If they catch me I'm screwed,' he said. ‘I'm barred from driving. I hope your pal's on duty, Gunter.'

Davy twisted in his seat and peered through the grid of the defrosting panel on the back window.

‘Should I ditch the blow?' he said.

‘Not yet,' Gunter said, deadpan.

Fintan flicked off the lights and hugged the wheel. He floored the accelerator, nose almost touching the windscreen. The speedometer twitched towards the 70 mark as we hurtled through the twilight.

Just before we reached the outskirts of the village, Fintan turned the lights back on and hung a right out the coast road.

‘You can drop me off here,' I said. ‘I'm going the other way.'

‘We're not stopping anywhere until we get to the slaughterhouse,' Fintan said.

A mile or so down the road we turned onto a grass split lane and clunked over the bars of a cattle grid and onto an expanse of balding waste ground. The old slaughterhouse was little more than a crude shed constructed from mismatched off-cuts of corrugated iron, its rickety roof insulated with a ragged patchwork of felt, the sole window blacked out with ripped plastic sacking. Gorse bushes peeped over a surrounding chicken wire fence.

We waited, ears sharpened against the stillness. No squad car.

Fintan put the handbrake on and boosted the radio. Someone spoke in Irish for a bit and then some old guy began to sing a
sean nós
air. Gunter got out and grabbed one of the fertiliser bags. The other two followed suit, dragging the heavy sacks toward the slaughterhouse door. I made as if to help, but Fintan ordered me to stay put. The
sean nós
singer's dirge droned.

Fintan leaned in and popped the boot.

‘C'mere,' he said.

I followed him around the back of the car. He swung the boot open.

Jamey was trussed up like an animal. His body was wedged between the spare wheel and the jack. His mouth was sealed with a strip of electrical tape and his hands were tied with binder twine that chafed his wrists an ugly red. His glasses were crooked on his nose and his eyes bulged like a spooked horse's.

Everything telescoped. I tore the tape from Jamey's mouth and tried to lift him out of the car, but something exploded against the side of my head and my ears whined. Rough hands yanked my arms behind my back and forced me to the ground, face first, my chest crushed against the hard cement. Blood leaked down the back of my throat, the sour tang of iron. Fintan was kneeling on my back and it was hard to breathe.

Gunter loomed over us, tall and silent as a standing stone. He grabbed Jamey by the scruff, hauled him out of the car and paused a moment. He seemed to consider his options.

Davy made limbering up shapes, rolling his shoulders.

‘Are we going to do this or what?' he said.

From the car radio, a maudlin violin scraped out some godforsaken air.

Gunter kissed the knuckles of his right hand and swung. The impact sounded like someone cracking a belt. Jamey's head rocked back and his knees gave out. Davy caught him, pinning the arms like he was holding a punchbag. Gunter kept slugging. The dull sickening thuds and gasps and surprised sounds were loud in the calm summer's evening. There was no hurry; that was the worst part. It went on and on until Gunter ran out of steam. Breathing heavily, he placed his hands on his knees, face flushed from the exertion.

‘Had enough?' he panted. A drop of sweat wobbled from the tip of his nose. My neck ached from straining to see what was going on from my vantage point on the ground.

Jamey didn't answer. Blood dribbled down his chin and his lips were all gashed and split. He gobbed a clot of bloody phlegm onto the ground.

‘I'll take that as a yes,' Gunter said, and hiked up the leg of his jeans and removed a hunting knife from inside his boot. A shard of fading sunlight refracted off the blade. Jamey's eyes followed it, his Adam's apple moving up and down. Everything went quiet; even the music stopped for a moment. Then, from the car, a girl's voice rang out, pure and unaccompanied.

Black is the colour...

Gunter grabbed Jamey's wrists, sawed through the binder twine and quickly stepped away.

‘Strip,' he said.

Jamey rubbed his wrists and wiped blood from his face with his sleeve.

‘Go fuck yourself,' he said.

Gunter lifted a lock of Jamey's fringe away from his eyes with the blade of the knife.

‘Do it. Unless you want a haircut.' He traced a line through the blood and grime, all the way down Jamey's cheek. ‘Or a facelift.'

Jamey stayed perfectly still, as though he hadn't heard a word.

Gunter roared: ‘Now!'

Jamey began to take his clothes and runners off with clumsy hands. Gunter kicked the clothes into a pile. He planted his feet apart, unzipped, extracted himself and began to piss on them. Steam rose up, attracting midges. He shuddered as he finished pissing.

‘More than three shakes is a sin,' Davy said.

Gunter pulled his fly up.

‘Just get in the fucking car, Dave.'

Fintan removed his knee from my back. I tried to push myself up, but he feinted a jab at my head, laughing when I flinched, and glared a moment, as if daring me to make another move. His eyes were cold and soulless, completely blank.

‘Come on, Fin,' Gunter snapped.

They took their time getting back into the car. I half expected them to change their minds and come back, but eventually they slammed the car doors and started the engine and roared off through the gateway and across the cattle grid. The engine's sound receded and then there was only a strained, taut silence.

Jamey sank to his haunches, wobbly as a calf. He was pale from shock, and his naked frame looked scrawny and fragile. I shrugged off my jacket and passed him my long lumberjack shirt. He knotted it around his middle with trembling hands. It hung from his waist like a skirt.

‘Got any smokes?'

It sounded like he'd had teeth pulled. Took him three matches to light the cigarette.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘This is my fault.'

‘You're sorry?'

He hunkered like a primitive, glowering at the ground between his bare feet for a moment, then looked up at me through the smoke, one eye already closing over.

‘Where'd they find you?' he said.

‘Outside the train station.'

He nodded.

‘Bad luck.'

‘Jamey, I have to tell you something.'

He shook his head.

‘No you don't.'

He stared hard into my eyes. Maybe Canavan told him. Maybe Gunter. Either way he knew.

He spat on the ground and said, ‘It's history, man. Piss in a river.'

And then he stood, wincing a bit.

‘Just tell me something,' he said. ‘That night in the chapel. What possessed you?'